Squeeze the throttle in first gear and the Bugatti lunges forward with a snarl; there’s barely time to catch your breath before grabbing second, then third

There’s a saying among journalists that you should never let the facts get in the way of a good story. That’s why I’m not too bothered whether it’s true or not that when the First Baron Raglan had to have his arm amputated at the Battle of Waterloo, he reputedly asked for it back so he could retrieve his wedding ring.

The First Baron didn’t have much luck, militarily speaking. He oversaw the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War and died not long afterwards from dysentery. One hundred and fifty-five years later his direct descendant, Fitzroy John Somerset, has just passed away in altogether more peaceful circumstances, and that’s why his famous Bugatti Type 51, a car he restored and owned for 30 years, is about to come to market. It’s one of the best-known and certainly most enjoyed Type 51s in existence, and you can’t talk about the car without mentioning the man: it will always be known as the ‘ex-Raglan 51’.

While he didn’t have such an eventful military career as his predecessor, Lord Raglan, as the Fifth Baron was more usually known, was a classic example of the slightly eccentric but intelligent and decent hereditary peer that the British do so well. He was the third of only three patrons of the Bugatti Owners’ Club to date – after Ettore Bugatti himself, and Earl Howe – and he was also a proper hands-on enthusiast, always willing to get his hands dirty in the name of vintage cars. Literally so, for giving his maiden speech in the House of Lords in 1965, he began: ‘I am sorry that I have only just arrived. I have suffered a series of misfortunes with my motor car; I am covered in oil and quite flustered, so I hope your lordships will excuse me.’
 
After an hour or so at the wheel of the Type 51, on a drizzly day in late autumn, I’m not covered in oil – a little bit of petrol, maybe – but my coat will never be quite the same, having been bombarded with dirt and road grit thrown up by those distinctive alloys. It’s a small price to pay for the chance to drive one of Bugatti’s greatest cars, its last truly successful racing car before this relatively small independent company had to yield to the state-backed resources of the Italian and German giants.

Appropriately enough, the Type 51 is presently in the care of Nick Benwell’s Phoenix Green garage – a VSCC institution, where ‘Jenks’ used to lodge – and to make sure it’s up to scratch we have reinforcements in the shape of Frazer Nash-BMW guru Mark Garfitt, who was a friend and neighbour of Lord Raglan and knows the car intimately. Mark helped in the latter stages of the car’s restoration and accompanied Lord Raglan on an epic European road trip in 1981. Later, over a post-drive pint in the adjoining Phoenix pub, he tells me: ‘We drove about 1500 miles and the only problem we had was a sunken carburettor float, which we repaired with a dab of Araldite in a hotel room beside Lake Como.’

Lord Raglan usually ran the car on methanol, but for practical reasons it’s back on petrol today. A few pumps on the Ki-gass primer, a swing on the starter and it explodes into life – there is absolutely no doubting this is a grand prix car; it’s merely loud at idle but a blip on the throttle sends the revs soaring instantly with a piercing shriek. Lord Raglan modified the supercharger to give an estimated 250bhp on methanol, so it’s probably still good for 180bhp on petrol, which gives a pretty healthy power-to-weight ratio in a car that tips the scales at roughly 780kg – the same as a Lotus Exige.

That engine is basically a twin-cam version of the single-cam straight eight used in the iconic Type 35, the twin-cam head and valvegear unashamedly cribbed from the American Miller engine – Ettore had swapped a trio of Type 43s for a couple of Miller-powered cars in 1929, in a deal with US racing driver ‘Leon Duray’, aka George Stewart. Otherwise the car is broadly similar to the Type 35: easiest way to distinguish a Type 51 is by the twin filler caps on the rear deck, although the hole for the supercharger relief valve on the Type 51 is also much lower down on the offside bonnet than on a Type 35.

The cockpit layout is very similar, too, but with the magneto poking through the dashboard on the left-hand side rather than in the middle of the dash, as on a Type 35. And the footwell is similarly cramped, requiring narrow-welt driving shoes or – for the less sartorially prepared – no shoes at all. At least the pedals are in the conventional order, and high enough off the floor to prevent your socks from soaking up the slick of rainwater, oil and petrol that tends to gather there after a decent-length drive.

There is proper grand prix history somewhere in this car’s early life – we’ll come to that in a moment – which explains the heavy-duty hand pump on the riding mechanic’s side, installed to resupply the engine with oil during a long race. Of more immediate concern are the outside-mounted handbrake (no fly-off ratchet on this race car; you want to park up, you stick a lump of wood under a wheel) and the similarly external gearlever, which snakes inside the bodywork to operate through a delightfully machined open gate.

Now that a little heat has permeated that 2300cc straight eight, you can point the 51’s slender prow at the open road – in this case, the busy A30 that runs past the Phoenix Green garage. Ease that ice-cold, highly polished gearlever towards you and into first, let up the short-travel clutch, and the Bugatti slips neatly into the traffic stream, leaving faint rooster tails of spray behind it. Mad dogs and Englishmen – or, in this case, one mad Englishman and an old car…

Squeeze the throttle gently in first gear and the 51 lunges forward with a snarl; there’s barely time to catch your breath before grabbing second, then third. The shift pattern is unconventional for modern drivers, with first on the left and towards you, second straight forward, third across to the right and back, and fourth forward from that; but after a couple of minutes it becomes second nature. On the day of my drive, the engine idle speed is set slightly too high and each engagement of first gear from rest brings a graunch of protest from the cogs: the way to get around this, I discover rather too late in the day, is to give the throttle a sharp little prod immediately beforehand, which, if you’re lucky, will confuse the piston in the single SU carburettor and cause the revs to falter momentarily, during which you can sneak the gearlever into first while it’s distracted. Some of the time, anyway.